REVIEW: Legendary Comic Book Heroes - STRYKER

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Next on our list of second wave Legendary Comic Book Heroes is Morgan Stryker from Marc Silvestri’s Cyber Force.

Cyber Force was one of the founding titles of Image Comics back in the early 1990s. Stryker was all but a poster child for early Image and ‘90s comics in general: He was a grim and tooth-gritting hero with a tortured past, he used large and improbable guns, and he was even a mutant. Plus he was pals with a shorter guy who had metal claws and flipped out! Truly, Cyber Force aimed to give fans what they wanted.

Stryker’s mutant power, and visual hook, was that he had three huge, beefy arms on his right side (along with the one on his left). Which was cool, and which benefited greatly from what we call "artistic license" – the arms never got in each other’s way. Indeed, Stryker could let his uppermost right arm dangle at his side like anybody else could, as though a pair of brawny shoulders and limbs didn’t rest immediately beneath it. All this was a perfectly fine effect, in two dimensions; but three muscular arms on one side of a basically normal human body poses a number of problems in three dimensions. Let’s see how Marvel Toys has decided to address this issue, shall we?

PACKAGING: But first let’s take a look at the packaging. It’s the "Legendary Heroes" standard, with the blue card and the simple, rectangular bubble. Stryker is identified on an insert in the front, and the figure is plainly visible. The card is generic to the wave, and, in this case, bilingual, because the review figure comes to us from our friends in Canada, land of bacon and moose. It’s a pretty attractive little package, though not so much so that you won’t want to take the figure out of it.

SCULPTING: First, the good bit: The three right arms all emerge from a single, round, oversized shoulder. This is at some variance with the Stryker of the comics, who is often depicted with his arms running down his right side in a sort of a row. Still, the arms look quite good – weird, perhaps, but with three right arms there’s no avoiding that. Also, the Stryker figure stands up very solid, which is very impressive indeed. An actual human being would be hard put to stand this well, in fact, were that human being to be of such lopsided construction. So huzzah!

Second, the less good bit: This is simply not one of this line’s better sculpts. It starts with the face, which is contorted in rage; not appropriate – Stryker’s a tough guy, not a demented sociopath – and not attractive, either. Then there’s the neck, which has a huge joint in it, plainly visible, which is also not ideal. The left arm is riddled with the veins associated with the ridiculously muscular, and though this sometimes works on a figure – as it does on this line’s Conan – here it is garish and ugly. The lines on the metal of the right arms are sloppy, and the body is dull; Stryker is just wearing a tank top (with odd, metal rings at the shoulders) and simple military pants. We know that Marvel Toys can do much, much better than this, sculpt-wise, and we know this because they almost always do.

PAINT: Unfortunately, the paint job does nothing to alleviate the problems with the sculpt. There’s shading on the left arm – which is, granted, very ably applied – which only makes the veins seem more gruesome. The right arms have a dark, spotty treatment, which makes them look like they’re made of old iron, like Stryker’s arms were built in the 1920s, say. And though this is, again, accomplished with skill, it is not ultimately appealing to the eye or true to the character. And the simple black of the shirt and brown of the pants and boots do nothing to jazz them up, either. Alas!

To the paint job’s credit, though, its problems are ones of poor choices, rather than poor execution. There’s very little bleed to be seen here, as there often is from this line. So that’s good!

ARTICULATION: Ah, now here we go. Cyber Force’s leader boasts fully 45 points of articulation – an almost unheard-of number. This is, of course, because of the right arms, which have six points apiece. And that’s to say nothing of the swivel of the arms’ shared shoulder, which allows all three arms to rotate around, first one in front, then another, for ever and ever, or until you get tired of it, anyway. The range of possible poses you can get from this arrangement is staggering. It’s an inspired solution to the “three arms” problem.

The rest of the body’s pretty great, too, lacking only the twisting waist of Marvel Toys’ usual array of joints. And this is made up for by, that’s right, articulated hair. Stryker’s ponytail can point in any direction you like. He can be in a downward free-fall, or walking against the wind. And let’s not forget that colossal neck-joint, which, whatever its other faults may be, does allow Stryker to look way, way up or way, way down.

ACCESSORIES: Stryker comes with two guns, one a pistol, and one a high-tech, pistol-gripped shotgun-looking sort of thing. And all this is good, because this is a man who needs guns. If he were in an early John Woo movie, he’d have another two guns, and he’d be able to empty a full Yankee Stadium of human life in less than four seconds.

This figure is also packaged with the right arm of Monkeyman, the build-a-figure for wave two of "Legendary Heroes." We’ll get to reviewing that pretty soon. Here’s a hint of what’s to come, though: Holy cow, the Monkeyman figure is great.

COST & OVERALL IMPRESSION: The dollar price for a figure of this series generally runs in the early to mid teens, depending on from whom you’re buying it. This second wave is only just coming onto the market, so if your favorite vendor doesn’t have it, try not to be too surprised or upset; it’ll come.

Marvel Toys, largely because of its prior incarnation as Toybiz, is famous for the articulation of its figures. And this figure shows us why; the articulation of this figure is full-on inspired. It’s really quite a lot of fun to come up with poses for the arms. On the other hand (no pun intended), there’s the sometimes-ugly sculpt, and the dull paint job. These points make Stryker the weak link in the second wave of "Legendary Heroes." This is a testament to the overall quality of the wave, that its worst should be mixed with some good and some bad. You could do worse, to be sure, but you could also do a little bit better.

CLICK HERE for even more images of Stryker.

Review and Photos by Matthew Kessen